Melbourne is the epicentre of the Victorian basket case. Its Lord Mayor, Nicholas Reece, (whom some of you may recognise from his bizarre commentary on Sky News Australia), has suggested a six-season First Nations calendar.

It would ‘make a bit more sense’, he claims.

Does it?

Diverging from the rest of the world and spending money on a calendar no one can read sounds very sensible.

Presumably, it comes with a parallel dating system like the bewildering naming convention that leaves tourists panicking, convinced they’ve landed in the wrong city when Narrm flashes up on the board.

Oh well. If Victoria is going to inhabit a different veil of reality, it might as well define its own truth when it comes to measuring time.

The only upside is that Melbourne will be able to experience six seasons every day instead of four.

The Lord Mayor said:

‘In the Wurundjeri calendar, there were six seasons. it was a wet summer and a dry summer. A wet winter and a dry winter. And when you think about it, it makes sense … we have gone and superimposed four seasons, essentially from Northern Europe.’

This is what happens when you leave politicians, bureaucrats, and activists alone in a Petri dish for too long. They start to fester.

‘They don’t really match up with the weather patterns … this is actually quite an interesting idea, don’t just rule it out.’

No, let me stop you there, Lord Mayor. We’re definitely going to rule it out.

There is a cost-of-living crisis. A youth crime crisis. A government debt crisis. A social crisis. A housing crisis. An education crisis. An energy crisis.

And the Lord Mayor wants to decolonise the weather.

This is the same weather, we’re told, that is going to change so much it no longer resembles historical times, making his proposed calendar entirely useless.

It’s one of those thought-bubbles which leaves you wondering how the heck it came into being and the answer is that it was a consequence of the Melbourne 2050 Summit.

What’s that? I hear you ask, weakly.

On May 9 (uh, sorry, the 39th of Waring), 700 ‘passionate’ Melbournians got together for a summit to share ideas about what Melbourne will look like in 2050. (A post-apocalyptic horror, if you’re wondering, Mr Reece.)

He projects Melbourne will be the size of London, with 9 million citizens, and that it will be ‘vibrant’.

Most of the summit overview features nonsense puff statements.

‘We need to think big. We need to look beyond the horizon.’

Beyond the horizon wait the treaty recommendations that racially segregate Victorians. Ouch. Maybe don’t look.

In the summit’s list of big ideas it’s hard to pick what’s more ludicrous: a swimmable Yarra or their dream of Melbourne being the headquarters of industry.

‘Intersectionally acknowledge the climate emergency and employ transport accountability in all actions?’

It’s posed as a question presumably because no one knows what it means.

I am going to call it a document of ‘freeform Woke’ because it resembles that therapy tactic where you’re asked to let the chaos dribble from your brain onto a sheet of paper, only this time the city decided to publish it as potential policy rather than burn it, as you’re supposed to.

For dumb ideas, we are spoiled for choice, but here are a few for your entertainment.

• Re-imagine the education system: ‘Establish a global talent, visa skills passport, and no-visa-zone to allow people with key skills to migrate to Melbourne.’
• Country-first city (as in ‘Welcome to Country’ not ‘cows and farms’): ‘From car-first streets to community and Country-first corridors.’
• Intergeneration fairness and stewardship: ‘Voices of non-human species and future generations must be considered in all policy, business, and governance decisions, and we have an intergenerational/interspecies justice embedded in city policy.’
• Government-issued Community Regenerative bonds: ‘That become more valuable as impact increases and aim to reduce food waste and food miles (???) per person, and create volunteering credit schemes for climate-positive behaviours or even have an Annual Regenerative Games.’ [I don’t know what any of that means. I’m just the messenger.]
• Every building has food growing capacity to sustain its residents.

They want to rebuild and micromanage Melbourne, killing off its charm and replacing it with a monument to the UN Climate Goals. At which point Melbourne will be a soulless, lifeless, crime-riddled, socially dysfunctional, economically dead, impossible to navigate, mess of a city with dead vegetables drooping off the rooftops.

Not only are these leaders interested in ripping up the calendar, they want to pilot a four-day week.

Why bother working at all?

Why not just live off the state and use this new ‘Culture Pass’ to attend ‘art’ events?

There is so much nonsense penned by entitled products of activist academia that it’s difficult to pick something.

‘Expanding democratic rights to everyone.’ Teenagers? Young kids? Newborns? Tourists? What are you on about? Everyone who should have democratic rights already has them.

‘Lower the voting age to 16 or 14 years?’ Fourteen!!!

‘Having a strategy to make Melbourne the most optimistic city, with examples including KPIs for happiness.’ Seriously? I imagine cracking down on violent street crime and closing the heroin injecting rooms next to schools might help with that but weirdly, those things aren’t on this list.

‘Celebrating all cultural festivals and building shared ownership.’ From the state whose lovers of inclusion destroyed statues of Captain Cook on Australia Day while another group beheaded statues of former Prime Ministers under the banner, The colonies will fall!

‘Redefining values from tolerance to knowledge, appreciation, and understanding.’ The term ‘redefining’ is certainly doing some heavy lifting.

‘Melburnians thrive on a localised, equitable, healthy, and dignified food system.’ UberEats? The local shopping centre? Supermarkets? Is there a food shortage in the restaurant state?

I am not being facetious, just trying to find a point to anchor this gibberish to reality.

‘Change culture and practices (First Nations knowledge, regenerative economies) including understanding and aligning with local seasons.’ That must be where the Lord Mayor got his headline from. He said:

‘This is one of those things where a bit of First Nations knowledge appears to make a bit more sense. Literally, wattle season starts and that week you look around Melbourne and all of the wattle trees have turned fluorescent yellow and it’s beautiful.’

The Lord Mayor should be reminded that randomly noticing wattle is not the same as organising time in a way suitable for the governing of a modern society. Ask any farmer and they’ll tell you wattle doesn’t have a ‘set week’. It’s not a clock. It comes out early. Comes out late. Comes out again when it shouldn’t. Imagine if you tried to run an office schedule like that.

If he wants to talk about ‘Biderap’ (dry season), ‘Luk’ (eel season), ‘Waring’ (wombat season), ‘Gannawarra’ (black swan season), ‘Guling’ (orchid season), and ‘Porneet’ (tadpole season), he can do that in his free time. He can scrawl it next to whatever Woke festival is taking over the city that week.

But the rest of Australia will keep calling Melbourne Melbourne (not Narrm), and use the stock-standard, globally recognised calendar. Why? Because we have work to do and bills to pay.

Activism is a luxury occupation of the comfortable class.

The summit describes Melbourne sitting at an historic juncture. ‘We have had some challenging years, a once-in-a-century crisis.’

I presume that is a reference to the Labor government.

This whole summit has to be a wind-up. ‘Showing the way forward for global cities in an age of climate change’ and they can’t even stop people from attacking each other with machetes at the shopping centre. Melbourne is closer to the third-world.

If you wish to injure your soul, read it for yourself.